Monthly Archives: April 2020

Sweeping Good Luck Away– Filipino custom

Nationality: Filipino American
Age: 57
Occupation: Healthcare Receptionist
Residence: Long Beach
Performance Date: April 27 2020
Primary Language: English
Language: Tagalog

Piece:

Informant: If, ah– let’s say you’re sweeping at night, and you have your, y’know.. So if you sweep at night, don’t sweep the dirt, the– y’know, the dirt out on the door. It’s, ah, bad, bad luck.

Collector: If you sweep it out the door?

Informant: Out the door. So it has to be–you can sweep, but y’know– the door is closed, and you just sweep and get all the, y’know, 

Collector: Get all the dust out?

Informant: But not to sweep–yeah.

Collector: So you’re supposed to sweep it into a pan and then take it outside?

Informant:Yeah, oh no, well, you just sweep–just not the door.

Collector: Do you know why?

Informant: Yeah, y’know, it’s same thing, it’s– no good [laughs].

Context: The informant is the mother of a close friend of mine, and is an immigrant from the Philippines, specifically Cavite City, which is about an hour away from Manila. She has lived in Southern California for roughly 40 years, while still maintaining close connections with her home country. 

Analysis: By sweeping the dust out of the door, one might inadvertently sweep the good luck out of the house. When asked, she reported that she had heard about the custom from other housewives in the Philippines. I have heard similar sayings in Jewish culture, though I cannot recall anything specific. As I did with my previous piece, I looked up “sweeping dirt out door” online, to better gauge who participated in this belief. This time, the results were varied; Though there were still many posts that labeled it a strictly Filipino custom (i.e. “You know you’re Filipino When..”), many seemed to consider it a general housewife belief. In this case, it seems as if this particular ritual can be seen in many different cultures.

Holding Your Breath As You Pass A Cemetery

Nationality: American
Age: 17
Occupation: High School Student
Residence: Charleston, South Carolina
Performance Date: 3/20/20
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

Subject: Well. Whenever I pass cemetery, I hold my breath because I don’t want to disrespect the spirits who aren’t as lucky as I am to breathe. Because then they might come and haunt me.

Interviewer: Where did you hear that?

Subject: Um… from my older sister. Yeah you do it because you don’t want to disrespect the ghosts as you pass by. They’ll literally haunt you. Because they’re like, “Fuck you. You can breathe and I can’t.” You’ll piss off the spirits. I also used to think that you could like literally breathe them into your lungs. Like if you inhaled when you went past a cemetery, then they would enter you through your lungs.

Context: The subject is my 17-year-old younger brother in his senior year of high school. He is supposed to attend Yale in Fall of 2020. He is of Ashkenazi Jewish and Russian descent. We have been quarantined together due to the Coronavirus pandemic and staying at our home in Charleston, South Carolina. After dinner, we were sitting in the dark in the living room and I asked him to tell me any folklore he could think of off the top of his head.

Interpretation: I remember being taught this superstition from my older sister as well. It was a very appealing superstition as a kid because it felt like a game. Whenever I would pass a particularly large cemetery, it was a great challenge between my siblings and I of who could hold our breath the longest. Related to this superstition is the act of covering your mouth when we yawn. Breath has always been associated with life and spirit, so it makes perfect sense that breathing when you passed the dead would be offensive. I thought it was interesting how this superstition seems to specifically in the context of driving in a car. It’s not realistic for a person to hold their breath as they walk past a cemetery, so it suggests that this superstition practice is modern. The old version of the superstition seems to go back to The Black Plague, when it was believed that the illness could be transmitted from dead bodies because of people inhaling as they passed by. The “spirit” that possessed people was actually the plague.

Buddhist Belief About Food Leftovers

Nationality: Korean
Age: 20
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 4/24/20
Primary Language: English
Language: Korean

Main Piece:

Subject: When I was little my grandma would always tell me and my cousins that if we had any leftover food in our plate that we’d be forced to eat those when we died in Hell. And it’s not even like you eat these leftover items one by one… No that’s hell. Folks would mix everything and you have to eat it all. The thing is in buddhist belief (which my family is) and especially the Korean and East Asian branch, they say that everyone goes through multiple layers of Hell when you die. No exceptions. Everyone goes through different Hells where you’re judged for different punishments, and that’s why the concept of Hell isn’t that scary to elderly Koreans because like everyone be going. And on top of that my grandma lived through the Korean war she was very little but you ask anyone who lived through that era when food was so scarce, having leftover really is a crime. There is also a very common phrase that’s like “밥그릇 싹싹비우다” which translates to airing out  your rice bowl clean, and it’s used to describe like a delicious meal so in result you would eat all of that food with no leftovers. Older Koreans can be really strict about finishing everything given to you and it’s part of like the general culture to try to finish everything in you plate. In schools and military and people are taught to empty their plates clean, or you’re being wasteful and rude to the cook.

Context: The subject is a 20-year-old Freshman screenwriting major at USC who was born in South Korea, and currently resides in Los Angeles, California. They are a close friend of mine, and we are currently quarantined on opposite coasts of the country. They are in LA, and I am in Charleston, South Carolina. I called them up one afternoon and asked if they had any folklore they would willing to share with me, and this is what they told me.

Interpretation: This folk belief sounded pretty personal to the subject and their family. There are apparently 18 layers of Hell according to Buddhist beliefs. They all seem quite torturous and uncomfortable. I found it interesting that everyone must go through these layers of Hell once they die. As the subject mentioned, there is a sort of comfort to that, and it does take some of the fear away to know that it is a collective experience. One of the major beliefs of Buddhism is that suffering is caused by greed, so it makes sense that it would be encouraged not waste any food, or get more food than is absolutely needed.

Filipino Utensil Superstition

Nationality: Filipino American
Age: 57
Occupation: Healthcare Receptionist
Residence: Long Beach
Performance Date: April 27 2020
Primary Language: English
Language: Tagalog

Piece:

Informant: So what I remember is, like, y’know, like that one, if you drop a utensil, either like, a fork– if you drop a fork on the floor, then they were saying that you’re gonna have a visitor, it’s gonna be a male. And if it’s, ah, a spoon, then it’s gonna be female.

Collector: Do you know why, like, the fork and the spoon have genders?

Informant: Yeah, it’s kinda like, the fork kinda like, represents the male, y’know, and then– if it’s like the little spoon, then the young, young, yeah, young girl. And then if it’s the little fork, it’s like young boy. Y’know, something like that, so it doesn’t have an age or anything.

Collector: Right, right, where did you pick this up, just like–?

Informant: Yeah, I heard it from the people, y’know, like, my relatives, and folks in the Philippines, y’know–

Collector: Where in the Philippines are you from?

Informant: Um, I’m from Cavite City. Yeah, it’s like an hour away from Manila.

Context: The informant is the mother of a close friend of mine, and is an immigrant from the Philippines. She has lived in Southern California for roughly 40 years, while still maintaining close connections with her home country. After the interview, the informant then recalled a past incident in which she had dropped a fork minutes before her daughter’s boyfriend came for a surprise visit. 

Analysis: This particular omen, as she mentioned, she had picked up from not only her relatives, but the general folk as well, suggesting that it is a household belief. While transcribing the interview, I searched the internet for more information of who participates in this belief. One thing I noticed is that when I searched up the phrase “dropping spoon company,” the only sites I found that mentioned it were at least ten years old, the latest being posted in 2010. However, when I searched up “dropping spoon Philippines,” there were far more results, most of them posted much more recently. Nearly all of them involved lists of Filipino superstitions, which were then posted on Filipino websites. One could reasonably assume that many of these lists were written by younger people, and from there, infer that this belief is still very much alive. 

Overall, this omen, though a minor thing, seems now to be a point of pride for many Filipino people. This pride could be an enactment of “cultural intimacy,” which Michael Herzfeld describes as “the recognition of those aspects of a cultural identity that are considered as a source of external embarrassment but that nevertheless provide insiders with the assurance of common sociality”. Though perhaps not too embarrassing, this belief is certainly not a proven fact by any means, and so could be seen as superstitious or outdated. Despite this, many Filipino people seem to regard it as an identity marker, given its inclusion in many lists entitled “You know you’re Filipino when..” 

Herzfeld, M. (2005). Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State. New York: Routledge.


Derogatory Joke About Romani People

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Charleston, South Carolina
Performance Date: 4/5/20
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

Subject: This is more of just like a classic- I think- Old man folklore. My Grandfather was basically like, “Yeah you know, you can’t trust gypsies.” He’s from Alabama. But he said, “You can’t trust gypsies. One time when I was little, we had a gypsy neighbor go around and ask for sugar and what not. So every time he came to my house my mom would give him some sugar. And what he would do is he would take the cup of sugar, he would walk out to the yard and stick his thumb in it so there would be a dent in it. Then he would come back to the house and say, ‘Oh you didn’t fill it all the way.’” And he was like, “Yeah that’s what gypsies will do, you know. They’ll put their thumb in the sugar and take twice.” And I was like, “Huh?”

Interviewer: Huh. Um… Where do you think he picked that up from?

Subject: It was like a joke basically. Definitely from his family members. Like just whatever they talk about or whatever.

Interviewer: Okay and like… How does that.. How does hearing this make you feel? How do you react to hearing this?

Subject: I mean… I took this one time and… actually the original twenty pages of my Senior Thesis that I wrote was a short story about this, that I didn’t end up leaving in the thesis. But that story influenced what I wrote and like… and it was like… as a character…

Interviewer: So you used it in a short story?

Subject: Like this folklore was kind of incorporated into it. I took the story and gave it to another character. So I guess you could say it was intriguing. I obviously understood the implications but I was like, “Okay… Who comes up with this? Why do you tell this?” It’s a joke I get it but… I don’t know. Clever I suppose but I don’t know.

Context: The subject is a 20-year-old African American male in his sophomore year at Columbia University studying creative writing. The subject and I were best friends in high school, and we are both currently quarantined in our homes in Charleston. I asked the subject if he would like to meet up for a six feet apart walk one evening, and asked him if he had heard any folklore he could share with me, and he told me this offensive joke his grandfather used to say.

Interpretation: I am pretty familiar with the use of the derogatory term of “gypsy” against Romani people, as well as the stereotype that they are thieves and swindlers. It was not long ago that I learned the origin of that the expression of getting “gypped”, meaning getting cheated or swindled, is derived from the word gypsy. I was actually hesitant about treating this derogatory joke as folklore, but I think it is significant to acknowledge these stereotypes are still around and still being passed down and taught to younger generations. I think of how antiziganism (Romani discrimination) compares to how antisemitism is viewed. For one, both people groups suffered devastating population death percentages during the Holocaust. But antizagnism is far more widely accepted in society. Just in 2017, a TV show called “Gypsy” was released by Netflix about a white woman’s path of becoming a cheater, manipulator, seductress, etc. She took on all of the horrid stereotypes and assumptions of the word. The term gypsy has only just started to be challenged as a derogatory slur. I think the prejudice, oppression, and discrimination against Romani people has generally been pushed to the side in American public education. People still dress up as “gypsies” for Halloween, the term “gypped” is still extremely common. There does not seem to be much reckoning with the discrimination against this particular group.

Furthermore, I found it interesting how detached the subject seemed to be from his grandfather’s telling of the joke. The way he imitated him was a sort of rambling that pretty clearly revealed his personal attitude towards the joke, this being that he was not a fan. He seemed generally both accustomed and fed up by this rhetoric from his grandfather.

See more at: https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/gypsy-slur-netlflix